Monthly Archives: July 2017

LADY JANE GREY named after the famous pretender queen of England, played by Helena Bonham Carter in the BBC Production of the same name.

(Click to embiggen.)

This image was taken under low-light conditions at under 18 inches with my Nokia Lumia 1020 camera phone and processed using Google’s Nik Collection, Color Efex Pro4, in Photoshop. Saved from flattened .psd to .jpg with maximum image quality selected.

AS IS BECOMING A CUSTOM here of late, Toni and I set out in the short bus for an afternoon of picture shooting. Well. No. We didn’t set out to do that. We were going to go to breakfast and then check out this urban ruins location Toni had read about in one of our local free news sheets. It was to be a one-shot, not an entire afternoon. The site is a compound of abandoned Victorian (pre-Civil War) houses, called Alexander Circle in Tower Park, in the Northern Kentucky suburb of Fort Thomas.

On the way there, we passed an interesting-looking cemetery in the city of Southgate, next door to Fort Thomas.

“Could we go in there?” Toni asked.

I allowed as how I’d never seen it posted no trespassing, so we probably could. “Want to on the way back?” I asked.

“If we come back by here,” Toni said. And I mumbled something about how that could be arranged.

Alexander Circle proved all that was promised. It’s the kind of place that makes your mouth water and your fingers itch for the pen to sign the papers. Nothing we could afford, mind, but much one could want. The houses are all huge and, as the sign notes, basically the officers’ quarters for the Fort. They’ve been abandoned since — I imagine — the Fort was decommissioned and are in sad condition, barely on the cusp of condemnation, and deeply in need of some TLC. There’s a sign posted that it’s U.S. Government property and trespassing is verboten. (Which, I imagine, no matter the town’s manifest patriotism, must stick in the craws of the community-oriented folks of Fort Thomas). But we managed to circumnavigate the circle, even if we couldn’t get into the actual street itself.

Then, on the way back, I returned north on Alexandria Pike to Evergreen Cemetery, no doubt familiar to all those who know the general area. The cemetery stands on some 250 hilly acres in the city of Southgate, Kentucky, a hop, skip, and a roll from the I-471 exit to US 27. You glide through the wide, wrought iron, double gates and enter a gentler time.

A time in which Rust may not have slept, but from which it surely entered into eternal rest. We took dozens of pictures each, strolling around the grounds, stopping for interesting sights and views. I’m sure that you’ll be seeing many of them from each of us, here and on Facebook, in times to come.

An afterword: I have complained a good bit lately about the inadequacies of my cell phone’s camera (Samsung Galaxy 6s). While I cannot afford to buy a real camera at the moment, I will be making plans to obtain one in the near-ish future. Meantime, I’ve bitten the bullet and charged up my late, lamented Nokia Lumia, in order to use its absolutely brilliant camera. We will see in the next whenever how much better I can do using it per preference. Watch this space.

Pro tip: Word Press will throw an error if you try to upload a media file while it is still open for editing in Photoshop. Word up.

THE IDA STREET Bridge planters. Ida Street is one of the main streets of the Cincinnati neighborhood, Mt. Adams — a 600-700-foot-tall hill looming over the downtown area and the river. It’s a trendy, yuppified bohemian enclave (my mother once likened it to Greenwich Village), with inflated property values and no parking on its narrow, twisting streets. The bridge is an Art Deco arch which forms an elegant backdrop for views of the west side of The Hill (as Mt. Adams is known to the locals) from down in the basin. These planters caught my eye when I was traveling through. Saturday, I was up there again and had a moment to stop on the bridge and snap a few shots.

I POSTED A photograph to Facebook. Without even asking — and certainly without permission (which would be absolutely denied) — the Fartbook decided to crop it in a way I neither approve or welcome, and make it into a panable image. I reproduce the approved (and copyrighted) version here (caption below). I shall take the original post down once this one goes live.

ORIGINAL CAPTION

Old St. Francis Hospital (Central Fairmount, Cincinnati), from the light at Quebec & Westwood. I’d like to get a shot clear of wires, but that means getting out of the car and standing on the sidewalk the other side of the stoplight on Westwood Ave — a fraught proposition for someone with my mobility problems. Still, the logitistics of it aren’t impossible, so…

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LADY JANE GREY named after the famous pretender queen of England, played by Helena Bonham Carter in the BBC Production of the same name. (Click to embiggen.) This image was taken under low-light conditions at under 18 inches with my … Continue reading → The post Katmunda appeared first on BabyTrollBlog.

AS IS BECOMING A CUSTOM here of late, Toni and I set out in the short bus for an afternoon of picture shooting. Well. No. We didn’t set out to do that. We were going to go to breakfast and … Continue reading → The post How We Spent Our Sunday appeared first on BabyTrollBlog.

THE IDA STREET Bridge planters. Ida Street is one of the main streets of the Cincinnati neighborhood, Mt. Adams — a 600-700-foot-tall hill looming over the downtown area and the river. It’s a trendy, yuppified bohemian enclave (my mother once … Continue reading → The post Oot and Aboot appeared first on BabyTrollBlog.

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